


a numbers game

by victorias



Category: Person of Interest (TV), Scandal (TV), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, Jaha is kind of a dick fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 08:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9713183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victorias/pseuds/victorias
Summary: a fixer and a private investigator walk into an alleyway...that's how these stories always start, right?three-way crossover kabby au featuring abby griffin as zoe morgan and marcus kane as stephen finch.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClumsyCapitolUnicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClumsyCapitolUnicorn/gifts).



> HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, JADE! since we share an affinity for zoe morgan and top!abby, this...happened. i hope you enjoy, angel!

Abby meets him in University.

He’s annoying. He’s stiff, and he’s stubborn, and he doesn’t listen to a damn word she says. He doesn’t study or recognize the greyness of his chosen profession -- there’s right and there’s wrong, and everything in the middle is of absolutely no interest to Marcus Kane. The law is king.

They fight all the time. And not just in class -- their social circles interact more than either of them prefer, which once very memorably resulted in a fight so dirty over  _ Blade Runner  _ (Abby: Team “Deckard Was a Rebel Replicant,” Marcus: Team “Deckard Should Have Been Jailed for Breaking the Law”) that they were both banned from their local BYOB theatre and forbidden by both Thelonius Jaha and Callie Cartwig from ever watching movies together again.

Everyone tells them that it’s just pent up sexual tension. If they just had sex, Callie once reasoned, knocking back a shot that smelled strongly of butterscotch, all of their problems would be solved.

Abby knows that isn’t true. Marcus is fundamentally different from her. They often wind up with similar goals (their competing campaigns for the head of the Students’ Association all promised the exact same things, up to and including mandatory coffee carts during finals), but their approaches are wildly opposite from one another. Marcus likes his clothes clean-pressed, his hair carefully styled, and his notes written in the same 3M ballpoint gel pen for every single class (he had a supply, she once spotted, meticulously arranged in their own designated elastic pen slots of his briefcase). Abby’s a stressed out pre-med candidate with a hole in her lab coat and an array of different coloured highlighters sitting abandoned and dried out at the bottom of her bookbag.

She celebrates the day she heads for medical school and he for law school. He falls out of their social circle as his life becomes more and more wrapped up with his new classmates, and she falls in love with Jake Griffin.

Life goes on.

 

* * *

 

Clarke is born, and Abby and Jake become the happiest parents in the world.

 

Jake dies, and Abby quits medicine.

 

Jake’s murderer walks free, and Abby begins her scorched Earth campaign.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She has to do this -- Jake died in the service of Thelonius Jaha, and no one prosecuting the case couldn’t be bought by him. If she wants her husband’s death avenged, she’s going to have to do it herself.

And then Marcus Kane appears.

They’re both older -- ten years older, in fact, and only aware of what the other was up to because of their old ties to Callie. She has a vague understanding that he made partner somewhere prestigious, but it isn’t until she puts herself to work researching him that she sees who owns his firm.

Jaha.

“I want to help,” he says, finding her in the lower food court of the Arkadia Court House with two travel coffee cups in his hands. “I think Jaha is breaking the law. I think he had Jake killed to shut him up. I want to help.”

She’s not a lawyer. She’s a former surgeon with revenge on her mind and a 5 year-old daughter at home with no father. But she looks at Marcus Kane -- face a little stubbled, top two buttons of his crisp white dress shirt undone, scar on his bottom lip pulled a little as he smiles a half-smile at her -- and thinks:  _ we can do this. _

It takes six months. Late night meetings over take-out (usually Indian for her, Thai for him), pouring over files he’d snagged from his office, murmuring quietly to one another to avoid waking up a sleeping Clarke all become the norm.

Sometimes he falls asleep on the couch, and sometimes Abby lays a blanket over him and lets him sleep while she reads and rereads everything on Jaha’s overseas deals that she can find. Sometimes she finds herself slumped over in her chair in the morning, woken by the smell of fresh coffee and the deep rumble of his voice as he chats with Clarke. Marcus takes to cooking them all breakfast on the nights they stay up, and Abby finds herself grateful for his presence.

She misses Jake. Having a friend down in the trenches with her helps.

It’s a cold, clear winter’s day when Marcus stumbles into her kitchen with the look of a madman on his face. He  ran all the way from the office, on foot because the roads are blocked up with snow, and he’s out of breath, but he doesn’t take a moment to collect himself: he knows what happened to Jake.

It’s her fault.

It’s all her fault.

It’s his fault, too.

 

* * *

 

 

 

_ Jaha’s most high profile case was that of a pharmaceutical company, ALIECO. When he took the case, he enlisted his best lawyer, Jake, to do the digging into ALIECO’s records. Normal work. Jake even consulted Abby, who confirmed for him what he’d suspected -- the “magical” painkiller ALIECO invented had side effects so severe that they’d caused heart failure in 10% of its first-run users. _

_While Jake went to Jaha with the news that his client was guilty, Abby called Becca, an old friend from medical school who went into pharmaceuticals. She wanted to know if Becca had any experience with ALIECO._

_What she didn’t know was this: Becca had long ago left her lab to head up her own private company. A company that no one knew had received its initial cash injection from one Thelonius Jaha under a shell corporation. He was his own company’s defense lawyer, and no one had a clue._

_Becca went straight from Abby’s meeting to Jaha, who went to Marcus._

_What would he do if a client’s wife was in danger of blowing a whole case for the firm?_

_“Put pressure on the husband,” Marcus had said, shrugging. “Turn them against each other, and she’ll have no one to believe her.”_

_Jake was dead the next day._

 

* * *

Abby and Marcus part ways. Marcus quits the law firm and disappears to Washington DC, and Abby vows never to let anything like this happen to another person again. So she uses the contacts she made to solve Jake’s death, sets herself up as the woman no one can do without, and sets out to fix the world.

 

* * *

 

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER  
NEW YORK CITY

 

“You know I hate when you shoot people,” Abby sighs, lamenting the loss of yet another pair of stockings as she kneels in a pool of blood to deftly wrap up another Reese Special (shattered kneecap, through and through). The hitman he’d taken out screamed himself into unconsciousness a good five minutes ago.

“I don’t like it much, either, but they were shooting at us.” John Reese stands over her in a blood-splattered white shirt with his gun tucked into the waistband of his dress pants like an idiot.

Abby hums.

“You do like it when you think they deserve it. I’m the one who always has to patch them up.”

She can hear the tinny sound of Finch agreeing over John’s half-broken earpiece.

“See, John? Even he thinks your kneecap obsession is excessive.” Abby secures the bandage and pats the face of the goon. “All done. You’re welcome, by the way.”

The goon, unsurprisingly, does not answer.

“Time to get outta here.” John reaches back for his gun as Abby rises, intent on sassing him for another few minutes or so (she has so many quips ready at his expense), when her eyes fall on a face half-cloaked in darkness just behind John.

And then a gun.

And then…

“Marcus?” Abby gasps, a reflex more than anything, brows furrowed at the bearded face standing with a gun clutched in his hand, the muzzle pointed at the back of John’s head.

Marcus’ face goes blank.

“Abby?”

 

* * *

 

There’s two ice packs clutched against two temples. John and Marcus keep eyeing each other with their good eyes, and it takes everything in Abby not to burst out laughing at the sight.

“You’re both idiots.” She crosses her legs and sizes them both up, settling her gaze on Marcus with an intense curiosity. “So, Kane, I guess we’ll start with the obvious: what the hell is going on?”

They’re sequestered in Finch’s favourite safe house. The exposed brick walls and dark wood floors are familiar to her in ways even her own apartment isn’t. She’s been camped out in one of the Finch-appointed bedrooms for over a week while she and John worked on tailing (and then hiding from) the now-kneecapped hitman.

The giant clock on the wall that Abby is always mildly amused to see actually keeps real time tells her it was well past ten. She and Clarke’s daily Facetime routine was reschuled for tomorrow, which means she had time to revisit with an old ghost.

“What the hell do you think is going on?” Marcus shoots back, irritatedly. “You shot my best PI! And then you wouldn’t let me explain anything until we were shacked up in this hipster hideaway, so if anyone is owed an explanation, I think it’s me.”

“Your best PI?” Abby asks, raising an eyebrow. “You think Shumway was a PI?”

Marcus glowers.

“I know Shumway was a PI, Abby. I also know your hired Batman here shot him in the damn knee.”

“Batman.” Reese’s grin is all teeth. He smiles like a monster who is unused to the feeling, slightly ominous to strangers and somehow endearing to friends. “Hey, Finch, does that make you Robin?”

“John,” Abby sighs. She’s sure Finch is disagreeing somewhere over the other end of he and Reese’s private line.

John takes the hint. He tosses the ice pack on the table and grabs his jacket before he leaves the apartment altogether, likely heading for wherever Finch likes to hide. The Batcave, probably.

She focuses on Marcus.

“Sorry about him. Now, Shumway was a hired hitman, Kane. Working for you must have been his day job. He was contracted to assassinate President Sydney at her Unity Day speech tomorrow.” Abby stands and approaches a stunned Marcus, gently laying her hand over the one clutching the ice pack to his rapidly purpling eye. She examines the skin with the pad of her thumb -- no breakage, just a hell of a bruise.

“I vetted him myself.” Marcus speaks quietly as Abby gives into her instincts and squeezes his hand for a moment in reassurance. “He was one of the best.”

“You couldn’t have known. He had multiple identities.” Abby retreats back to her chair. Marcus looks deflated, like he’s actually taking Shumway’s betrayal hard.

“How did  _ you  _ know?” He asks, suddenly, eyes meeting hers.

Abby thinks of the truth: that she has a mysterious, besuited friend infamous throughout New York for being a modern day Robin Hood, who also somehow always knows when someone was going to be in danger. That the Man in the Suit had just left the very room they sit in to go meet up with his equally mysterious benefactor and work out who to save next. That she had given up medicine after Jake’s murder just to get away from anything that reminded her of his death and Jaha’s betrayal. That she hates politics, but loves people. That losing Jake had felt like her own personal failure. That she lived to try and right the wrongs of her country so that her daughter would have a better world to live in.

Instead, she sighs.

“You want a drink?”

 

* * *

 

Fifteen years of separation feels like nothing.

He has a perfectly trimmed, silver-streaked beard, and his hair is longer now -- wilder, with the loose curl his shorter cut had tried to tame. He wears leather jackets now, too, and his accent has taken on a small lilt from his time overseas. Working for Olivia Pope had taken him everywhere after he left Abby’s house that day fifteen years ago.

A private investigator. He’s a PI. And a rogue one at that, judging from the gun and the rugged look he’s sporting. He’d been tailing John (who, in turn, was tailing Shumway) when he’d stumbled upon them both in the alley.

Marcus always did manage to find her when she least expected it.

“How’s Clarke?” He asks, sipping from Finch’s stash of whisky with her. “I haven’t seen her since she was tiny.”

Abby smiles. Images of him cooking her eggs while Clarke’s chubby little legs swung off of one of their old barstools rises unbidden in her mind; Marcus had adored she and Jake’s daughter, cared for her in those strange six months where nothing quite made sense except for the bubble they’d created with each other.

“She’s wonderful. She’s twenty now.” Abby laughs into her glass. “I have a twenty year-old kid. She’s an artist, actually. She lives in San Francisco with her girlfriend. She’s happy.”

Marcus smiles like that was the answer he was hoping for. Abby feels a low tug in her stomach at the attractive way his cheeks lift with the curve of his lips.

_Oh._

“To Clarke,” Marcus says, raising his glass in a belated toast. “And to the woman who raised her.”

His smile reaches his dark eyes. She clinks her glass against his, crosses her legs, and licks her lips.

 _This is new_.

 

* * *

 

**MARCUS KANE**

Thanks for fixing me up last night. And for the whisky. 

 

**ABBY GRIFFIN**

I’m not as grateful for the whisky, but you’re welcome. 

 

**MARCUS KANE**

Headache?

 

**ABBY GRIFFIN**

Remember the night of Jake’s 21st?

 

**MARCUS KANE**

I remember a certain someone getting so drunk that she decided to push me in the pool. 

 

**ABBY GRIFFIN**

You told me my financial plan for the student government was more unstable than the time travel mechanics in Back to the Future. Getting dunked was a forgone conclusion. 

 

**MARCUS KANE**

Let me make it up to you? 

 

* * *

 

Abby skips her array of dresses and opts for a sleek pair of black cigarette pants and a half-tucked white silk shirt. She ditches the heels, too -- her daytime persona is carefully crafted to present herself as the alpha of any room, but she much prefers her off hours to be spent in the epitome of comfort. So the black booties are in, kissing the hemline of the pants to show off just the slightest hint of ankle. 

What? She’s got nice legs, and she knows it.

He pressed the issue of picking her up only once before respecting her insistence in meeting him there. Instead, she Ubers her way to Eden, which turns out to be a slightly upscale but intimate place in the heart of Tribeca.

The ceiling is painted the darkest black she’s ever seen, with twinkling lights hung like drapes over the exposed pipes to give the whole thing a starry feeling. There’s exposed wood everywhere, too, and knotted pine benches lining the walls.

Vera Kane makes sure they have a quiet table near the window, complete with an already chilled bottle of red wine and baked brie wrapped in a delicate filo dough. Marcus pulls her wrought-iron chair out for her like the gentleman he is (and never used to be, but then perhaps that was her past assumptions more than it was her really  _ knowing  _ him). He cuts a fine figure in a slim-cut suit with no tie, which gives her a nice view of his tanned collarbones.

He’s got nice collarbones.

He’s got nice everything, really.

And he’s  _ so goddamn smart.  _ She’s on her toes with him -- they’re both in the profession of digging secrets out from even the toughest of subjects, and that makes their dinner that maybe is a date and maybe isn’t a date something of a “fraternizing with the enemy” type night. Something about that thrills her in ways that cause heat to flush her chest pink in the low lighting of the restaurant.

“I heard someone helped take down Vertanin a few years back,” Marcus says, swirling the wine in his glass as they await their entrees. “That has you written all over it.”

Abby carefully sucks a few stray pastry flakes from her thumb while regarding him. Sharing with him could be dangerous. But watching as his pupils blow wide at the sight of her tongue darting out to retrieve the last of the filo tells her that he isn’t here strictly for business -- it’s just how he makes conversation.

They both might be here for something else instead.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Abby says, low, gathering her hair to one side to drape the curls over her right shoulder. “I could say the same thing of Olivia Pope’s rescue last year, too.”

Marcus leans back and slings his arm casually over the back of his chair, his posture open and unthreatening. He runs a hand through his beard thoughtfully; it’s a charming habit, one she’s not even sure that he knows he has, so automatic is it as a part of his process.

“She’s a good friend. Everyone at Pope & Associates is. They’ve got their own Abby, as a matter of fact.” He smiles crookedly at her. “But yes, in the interest of transparency: that was me.”

Abby leans forward and rests her chin on her hand. She catches his eyes dart down to where the swell of her breasts is exposed by the drape in her blouse, then flick back up to her eyes quickly.

“Transparency, huh? Thought you liked your secrets.”

“Not from you,” Marcus replies quietly. He holds her gaze for far longer than he needs to, dark lashes dipped low as he slowly burns her up from the inside out with an impossibly intense wanting.

Abby presses her legs together under the table. She pulls a bit of her bottom lip between her teeth and worries it gently while her eyes drop to once again sweep the bit of tanned chest she can see standing out against the white of his shirt. God, he’s attractive.

“Marcus,” she says, suddenly, needing to say this before...whatever is going on between them goes any further. “I need you to know something.”

He sits up at once, alert, instinctively swivelling his head around for any sign of a threat. Her heart fills with affection.

“It’s okay. I just...back then, when we found out about Jake, I want you to know that I never blamed you. I know we fought before you left. I know we left it on the wrong terms. But you couldn’t have known what Thelonius was going to do.” Abby reaches for where his hands are pressed flat against the table and takes one within her own. She rubs her thumb back and forth across the soft skin until she feels his fingers curl into hers.

“It wasn’t your fault, either, Abby. I hope you know that.” His mouth lifts a little in a sad smile. “We all played our roles, but in the end, someone else pulled the trigger.”

Abby nods. He’s right. It’s taken her fifteen years to accept it, but both of their parts in Jake’s death have stopped haunting her. She misses him like she’s missing a part of her, of course, but the hurt has stopped throbbing in her chest. She and Marcus made their decisions, and now they live with them every day. They go on.

“I just needed you to know that,” Abby says, keeping her hand in his. “Now, where were we?”

Marcus huffs a laugh, dropped his chin to his chest to hide his grin from her.

“You sure are a tough date, aren’t you?” He says, squeezing her hand before reluctantly letting it go to make way for the waiter delivering their dinner.

“So this is a date?” Abby questions him with a smirk. “My, how times change.”

Marcus actually freezes for a moment. His tenderloin is slipped in front of him quietly while his eyes remain wide, and Abby has a great time watching him try to relive the last minute to see where exactly he said the thing she’s sure he didn’t really mean to say.

She does read people for a living, after all.

“Abby, I…” He looks up at her. There’s that affection again, swelling in her heart at the sight of him trying to regain the suave attitude he’d had only seconds ago.

She takes pity on him.

“I want it to be a date, too, Marcus.” She lifts her refilled wine glass to mirror the toast he gave yesterday. “To Callie Cartwig, who always maintained that this would happen someday.”

He lifts his own glass and thinks for a moment before nodding, his strong fingers curling around the delicate stem of the glass.

“To someday,” he murmurs.

They hold each other’s heady gaze as they drink in unison.

 

* * *

 

Her back hits her front door. 

Marcus is pressed against her, hip to chest, his hands in the very innocent area of her upper back while hers hold tight to his shoulders. She can feel every shaky breath of his by the rise of his pecs against her breasts; she’s sure he can feel how stiff her nipples are even though the layers between them.

But he hasn’t kissed her.

“Abby.” He rests his forehead against hers. “Do you want -- is this what you want?”

Abby hums low in her throat. She hasn’t had anyone in so long -- for a long time, it was just herself in her bed, and then sometimes John, but never permanently. And not for a while. She’d briefly entertained the thought of bedding John’s assassin friend, Sameen Shaw, but she’d never really gotten past the fantasy stage of that one. Shaw’s interests seem to lay the hacker Abby only knew as Root.

But this...this is very real -- so real, in fact, that she can feel the evidence of it hard against her hip.

“God, yes,” she whispers, voice smoky from the wine. “Yes, Marcus.”

He wraps his arm around her back and leans in as she leans up, the bristles of his beard tickling against her palm --

Her phone rings.

“Are you kidding me?” Abby gasps, letting her head thud against the door behind her. Her phone continues to ring in her pocket despite her furious mental refusal to acknowledge its existence. “I’m sorry, Marcus, it could be work.”

(It can’t be Clarke, of course, for her daughter finds herself wildly funny and changed her own ringtone in Abby’s phone to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” She hasn't figured out how to change it back.)

“I understand.” He begins to pull away, arm dropping from around her shoulders, but Abby holds him still. She reaches in her pocket and slides her thumb along the screen to answer while lifting her nose against Marcus’ to brush them together, mouths achingly close to one another.

“Griffin,” she answers. Marcus settles against her and begins nuzzling his beard into her cheek with his lips trailing fluttering kisses against her skin.

“He looks nice.” Harold Finch’s normally pleasing voice grates on her ears. Of all the times for him to call...

“Can I help you, Finch?” Marcus’ hands begin to wander along her silk-covered sides.

“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Griffin, but Mr. Reese seems to have found himself in the middle of a situation with one of President Sydney’s ambassadors.”

“Which one?” Abby asks, helpfully lifting her jaw so that Marcus can kiss his way down her neck. “If it’s Ridley, I can’t help you.”

“It’s Nygel.”

She’s not getting laid tonight. Abby sighs. She so badly wants to take the beautiful man in front of her upstairs and show him everything they’ve been missing out on since college, but this is one situation she knows she is absolutely needed for. Nygel is slippery and clever, and thus she and John will get along like fire and water.

“Send me the details. I’m on my way.” Abby finally concedes. She lets her head fall against Marcus’ shoulder and tries very hard not to make things worse by brushing against the hard cock in his pants.

“As fast as you can, please, Ms. Griffin.”

Finch hangs up. Marcus buries a hand in her hair and kisses her temple in what she’s sure is meant to be a comforting gesture, but instead just continues to set her aflame. She wants him so, so badly.

“Go. Your friend needs you.” He pulls away reluctantly. The loss of his body heat feels like an actual crime, as does the unsated need she feels deep in her belly.

“Rain check?” Abby asks, straightening her clothes out.

“Count on it.”

Abby impulsively leans forward and places a kiss against his cheek. She lets herself linger for a moment (perhaps longer than necessary, but dammit, she’s  _ frustrated  _ and the beard under her hand would feel fantastic between her thighs) before pulling away.

“What was that?” Marcus asks, looking a little dumbfounded.

“Let’s call it hope.” Abby rubs her thumb across his bottom lip.

He smiles.

 

* * *

 

Date Attempt Number 2: Dinner at the Grand (Finch’s recommendation). Marcus gets called away to DC by Olivia halfway through. Abby makes friends with Jasper, the new restaurant owner, and makes use of Marcus’ tab to drown out the sheer sexual frustration she feels at his departure. He’d been in a full  _ suit.  _ She’d worn a tight dress, for godssake. 

Date Attempt Number 3: The opening of Bellamy Blake’s vintage library and “underground” speakeasy. She finds out Marcus practically adopted Bellamy and his younger sister, Octavia, and that he’d helped Bellamy get the idea off the ground. They spend the night pressed against one another on the dance floor and nursing their drinks with his hands tracing circles against the skin of her hip. She leaves early to go put out some kind of stock fall fire with sticky thighs and an unslaked hunger between them.

Date Attempt Number 4: Attempted coffee shop date. He shows up in black jeans and a grey t-shirt. She wants to strip him naked then and there. Instead, the whole city goes dark in some kind of rogue hack, and she gets a call from Reese that pulls her away from the sight of Marcus’ extremely gorgeous arms doing the most to stretch the fabric of his shirt taut.

Date Attempt Number 5: Charles Pike’s election announcement dinner. Marcus in a tux, Abby in a sparkling champagne dress that has a slit so high it should be illegal. Marcus can’t take his eyes off of her all night. They finally have their first real kiss out on the hotel balcony. He’s called away to consult with Pike’s rival, leaving Abby slightly shaken from the passion of their kiss and the swirl of emotions it brings.

Date Attempt Number 6: A night in at his beautiful Tribeca loft, not two blocks from his mother’s restaurant. He cooks for her. She takes in the industrial steel mixed with warm wood and decides that this is the most Marcus place she’s ever seen. Her second decision is that the couch is the place she’d like to throw him on, especially after seeing him in rolled up shirtsleeves, slicing an onion with precision even she is impressed at. Abby barely gets him on his back before both of their phones ring. Climbing off of him with his cock hard through his jeans and her cunt wet through her panties is one of the most difficult things she’s ever done.

 

And then, they catch a break.

 

* * *

 

Abby calls in every favour she has. Everyone from Joss Carter to Emori, John Murphy’s girlfriend, gives her exactly what she asks when she pulls their card. Some are her friends, some regular clients, but it doesn’t matter -- when Abby Griffin asks for a favour, she’s fortunate enough to have people in her life that will stop whatever they’re doing to help.

If they don’t know that they’re helping her finally sleep with the man she’s falling for...well, that’s alright.

She gives Marcus a time and a place. He meets her at La Marina, a beautiful dock and restaurant combo that Luna owns and manages. Abby takes in the look of him in the same dress pants and white shirt he’d worn on their first date and feels her whole body warm. Yes, this was definitely the right choice. And so was the little black dress she settled on, which he swallows hard at the sight of.

“Waterfront dining?” He asks as he takes her in his arms and places a gentle kiss against her lips. Abby smiles into his kiss.

“Oh, something like that.”

He follows her willingly. She keeps his hand in hers as she leads him around the back of the restaurant and down the gently floating ramp to the dock, where a beautiful, white yacht bearing the name “Floukru” in delicate cursive is lit with the glow of twinkling fairy lights along its railings.

This is it.

“Abby…” Marcus breathes. She only turns to him once they’ve climbed the lowered steps onto the main deck. He’s totally in awe, taking in the lights and the candles and the magnificent nighttime view of New York. “How did you…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He surges forward, suddenly, seizing her in his arms to press a kiss against her mouth. Yes, this is what she wanted -- just she and Marcus, alone, finally ready for each other.

He breaks away from her to catch his breath. Her breasts pressed firm against his chest, Abby brackets his face in her hands and kisses down his neck to the open collar of his shirt.

“I called in every favour I had,” she whispers, pulling aside the fabric of his shirt to bite gently at his chest. “Even Olivia. Tonight is ours and ours alone.”

Marcus pulls back to gaze at her in wonderment. It’s usually him that surprises her; she can’t count the number of times he’d so casually done something so kind that she’d stopped for a moment to take him in. Now, he searches her face with his dark eyes and breaks into a smile.

“You called Olivia, too?” He laughs. “You are a terrible influence.”

And then he kisses her.

And she kisses him.

She backs them up towards the cabin. They move at the pace of sloths, and for once she doesn’t mind -- his tongue is in her mouth, his hands pulling up the hem of her dress, his shirt coming unbuttoned by her frantic hands. They’ve waited so long for this and yet they can’t get it together long enough to let each other go, so Abby finds herself leading him backwards with her dress around her hips and his hands on her ass instead.

“Marcus.” Abby gasps against his mouth, her hands splayed against his chest. “Bedroom.”

He pushes her against the wall instead. His hips grind against hers and she sees stars at the feel of him so, so close to where she wants him.

“Wall,” he offers.

She’s tempted.

“Bedroom.” Abby hisses through her teeth as he slips his hands beneath her underwear to properly palm her ass in his hands. “I have plans. Bedroom, Marcus.”

They don’t bother parting. He lifts her with a grunt and she goes, wrapping her legs around his waist so that he can carry her the last few feet to the door at the end of the narrow, lacquered wood hallway.

Marcus stops short. Abby smiles and slides down his chest, shoes gone, bare feet sinking into the plus carpeting of the master suite. She’d had it furnished with everything they’d need: plush, fluffy pillows, flameless candles that glowed like firelight, a silver ice bucket with champagne chilling inside it, two perfect crystal flutes, and to top it all off, a fur throw thrown over the massive bed.

She steps away as he takes it all in. The ceiling is low and the walls dark, giving the room a cozy, intimate vibe perfect for a night of long awaited...( _love making_ , she thinks to herself, but they aren’t there yet, there’s no way they can be there yet.)

Her dress is already bunched around her waist, so she pulls at the hem and slides it off over the top of her head. Marcus watches her strip with a tiny tremor in his hands. He’s dying for it as much as she is.

Her soaked panties slide down her legs, and then her bra is finally unclasped and dropped to the floor, too. She doesn’t bother waiting for a reaction from Marcus -- she can see the slight “o” of his mouth and the rapid rising of his chest -- but instead turns and climbs onto the furs of the luxurious bed to lay herself out, naked and wanting.

Abby slowly parts her legs. “You said something about dining?”

He doesn’t even bother to get undressed. Marcus climbs onto the bed and straight between her legs, taking her mouth in a scorching kiss before moving rapidly downward to lavish attention on her wet cunt.

The sounds he makes are absolutely filthy. He groans into her slippery flesh and inhales the scent of her, placing open-mouthed kisses against her singing clit. Abby buries her hands in his hair and jerks her hips up; his lips close around her clit and suck experimentally at the bud.

“Marcus!” Abby gasps, back arching. 

She holds tight to the silky strands of his hair and grinds against his bearded face. She’s never had a man with a beard before, she notes in some far off part of her brain, and the delicious scratch of it against her thighs and cunt add just a little something else to her pleasure. He feels  _ good. _

Two fingers enter her cunt and crook upwards, rubbing and pressing frantically while his tongue flicks and laps at her clit. The little exhalations and happy whines he lets out as he eats her send her higher than she thought possible, pushing her faster towards orgasm than she could have dreamed. If only she’d known in University that Marcus’ mouth was good for other things than infuriating her to the point of shouting.

“Oh god, oh god.” Abby’s legs tremble on either side of his head. She thrusts up desperately against his mouth, chasing that high, feeling a third finger enter her and thrust into her cunt quickly, rapidly, his lips suckling and tongue rubbing and --

She glances down. There Marcus Kane is, a wayward curl flopped over his forehead, his face buried in her cunt and his arm flexing as he pushes his fingers inside her, and Abby  _ comes _ like she hadn’t in years. Heat flushes from her cunt out to the tips of her fingers, tingling in her breasts and stalling the shake in her legs as her back bows and she cries out in total and complete ecstasy.

“Oh my god.” Abby pants as she comes down. She throws a hand over her eyes and scratches gently at Marcus’ hair with her other one. He nuzzles happily into her cunt and hums.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he says, pressing wet kisses against her legs. “You taste better than any wine I’ve ever had.”

Abby huffs out a bewildered groan. She’d forgotten was it was like to be so desired. She’d had no shortage of offers, but from him it felt different. Better. Less like he was there for an orgasm and a nap, and more like…

Well.

“That was incredible.” Abby lifts her hand away and throws it above her head, keeping the other in his hair. “Get up here and kiss me, Marcus.”

He does. He lays his body on top of hers and into the cradle of her legs, her wetness soaking through the front of his impossibly still on pants as he shares her taste with her. Sweet and salty, she thinks, and very good from his mouth.

Not so good? Him still being completely dressed.

She slides her hands down his broad back and starts working at the bottom of his shirt, finishing her job from earlier and pulling it from his belted pants. Finally, her hands touch the bare, tanned skin of his back. She can feel the play of muscles beneath the smooth skin and feels her legs tighten around his hips -- she needs him.

“Strip.” Abby pulls and yanks at the shirt until it’s over his head. He very helpfully catches her drift and lifts up on his knees just far enough to undo his belt, button, and fly, and together they shove his pants and boxers down his legs and onto the floor.

Naked, Marcus lowers himself back against her, but Abby has other plans. She pushes him on his back and climbs over his sturdy thighs to park herself on his legs.

This, she wants to savour. Her lover bathed in moon and candlelight, skin bronzed and soft, chest dusted with the finest hair that trails into the thatch above his cock. It’s...massive, she can’t help but notice, likely just a little too much for her to get her fingers around, thick and long and uncut. She places a hand on his trembling stomach and very gently runs the tip of her nail along the underside of his member.

“Abby!” He breathes, hips rising. He’s not looking at her hand, though, he’s looking at her face.

Marcus’ eyes run over her brow, her cheekbones, the slightly bee-stung swell of her lips from his kisses, down to her breasts, belly, and between her thighs. He takes a deep breath to calm himself while she busies herself with taking the steel heat of him in her hand and pumping the silken length of him.

“You’re beautiful,” Marcus says, almost reverently. “Abby, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

God, she is falling for him.

Abby doesn’t answer, but instead ducks her head down to place a single kiss against the wet, purpling head of his cock. She wants to do more -- she wants to taste him properly, to take him in her mouth and lay her tongue against his length, but his hands on her shoulders are pulling her upwards and she goes, letting him take her mouth in a deep kiss.

Her nipples brush against his chest and her thighs arch against his hips, and the ache of her cunt longs for satiation from the thick cock between his legs. Abby lifts her ass and slides her wetness along the length of him, grinding them slowly together so that his hardness slips from her entrance forward to her clit.

“Come on.” She kisses the words against his mouth. “Come on, Marcus.”

“Please,” he begs.

And so she obliges him.

His cock is slick with her own desire in her hand. She guides him to her entrance and sighs as she feels him plant his feet against the mattress and  _ finally,  _ blissfully push into her for the first time. 

She’s never been stretched like this in her life. Sure, there were others, but Jake was a little thinner, a little longer (and expert in hitting her g-spot), and John much the same. Her vibrators, too, had their merit, but nothing quite compared to the slow slide of Marcus Kane’s cock into her cunt as she sat astride his thighs.

“Marcus!” She lets out a small whimper, throwing her head back as he slowly thrust his cock in increments into her, letting her get used to the size of him.

“Abby, honey, come here, let me --” Marcus sits up on one elbow and pulls her upper body towards him; his lips find her breasts and Abby has to grab his hair to keep herself from collapsing.

He hadn’t yet had a moment to spare for her breasts, but he does so now, rocking slowly into her as he slips his lips around her nipple and sucks at the pink bud of her breast. His beard tickles against her sensitive skin and sends delightful tingles through her whole body.

An oh-so-gentle bite comes down onto the nipple in the wet heat of his mouth and Abby cries out, jerking her hips downward to take all of him inside her. She can’t handle slow -- she needs fast, and she needs it now. So she lifts her hips to allow everything but the tip of his cock to slide from her and then pushes down, starting a rhythm as he huffs out short breaths against her breast.

“Fuck, Marcus,” Abby breaths, looking down at him as he kisses across the pink flushed expanse of her breasts to take her other nipple into his mouth. “Like that. Just like that.”

Marcus uses the bend of his knees and the balance of his feet against the mattress to meet her thrusts with his own. Her nipple pops out of his mouth on a particularly hard one and he buries his face in the crook of her neck instead, balanced on one hand while his hips drive his cock into the warmth of her cunt.

He feels...incredible. Abby isn’t one for coming with her clit untouched, but the thick slide of him inside her still sends shivers down her spine. She rocks upon his dick to a pattern their bodies know instinctively, primally, sweat beading on their skin and mouths hungrily searching for one another.

“Marcus, I need -- fuck, I need --” Abby lets him collapse back onto the soft embrace of the furs as he continues to pump his hips, her words cut off by a long groan when he splays his palm against her hip and lets his thumb rub against her clit. “Oh god. Right there.”

“Yeah?” He gasps, panting, thumb slipping through her slick. He anchors his other hand to her ass and helps her ride him, keeping hold of the curve of her with fingers pressed into the softness of her skin.

“Yeah. Oh, god yeah.” Heat once again builds between her legs. Abby takes her hands from his chest and brings them to her own breasts, teasing and pinching her nipples while Marcus lifts his hand and slaps it back down on her ass out of sheer desperation. “Fuck, Abby.”

She comes. The sting of his hand, the feeling of his touch on her clit, the stretch of him inside her, his hips fitting so perfectly with hers: it all coalesces into one giant wave that sweeps her up and stills her shaking form, bringing forth a wordless cry from her throat. Beneath her, inside her fluttering cunt, Marcus lets out a groan and jerks his hips, slamming up into her and filling her with his orgasm, his cock pumping a few final times inside her as both of their bodies go slack and they fall together against the soft fur adorning their bed.

“Wow.” Abby leans up enough to place a heated kiss against his lips. “That was so worth the wait.”

Marcus’ chest rumbles as he laughs.

“The couple weeks wait, or the few decades wait?” He gazes at her and there’s absolutely no denying that there’s love written all over his face.

“Both,” she whispers. “Both.”

He reaches up and tucks a honey brown curl behind her ear, smiling the most tender smile she’s ever seen. Her heart swells.

“Abby,” he whispers, hand sweeping up her back. “In any universe, in any time, you are always worth the wait.”

Abby thinks of the two kids they’d been, squabbling and yelling at each other in movie theatres (and near pools, in class, Jake’s car…) and smiles. If only they’d known how far they’d stray from their paths, that they’d end up as a fixer and a PI, that the universe had both pain and love in store for them in equal measure. If only they’d known how far they had to go.

“I think I love you, Marcus Kane.” She says, and in her very bones she knows it to be true.

Marcus kisses her softly.

“I think I love you too, Abby Griffin.” 

A comforting silence falls over them. Then, Abby starts laughing, delight emanating from her very being.

"What is it?" Marcus asks, still drowsy but trying very hard not to be as she leans up and rests her forehead against his.

"Someone is going to have to tell Callie that she was right."

His laughter joins hers and floats out the window onto the water, disappearing into the glittering night.

 


End file.
